Case Study: The Cheaper Show builds a scalable online art showcase handling 1,200 global submissions with WooCommerce

The Cheaper Show - Customer Case Study

The Cheaper Show is a grassroots art event from Vancouver that began 10 years ago and has grown into one of Western Canada’s largest one-day art fairs. As it expanded—receiving 1,200 artist submissions from over 50 countries and planning events in Tokyo and other cities—the organizers needed a website that could manage high-volume international submissions, streamline curation, showcase selected work, and withstand major traffic spikes.

We built a heavily customized site on the WooThemes Kaboodle framework, using Gravity Forms (with a custom integration) to populate an Artist custom post type, and a bespoke curation tool to move entries from submission to selection or rejection without manual data entry. Multiple custom widgets and widget areas present content flexibly, while Amazon Cloud hosts images to handle traffic surges—resulting in efficient processing of 1,200 submissions, easy display of 200 selected artists, and reliable support for international exposure and growth.

The Cheaper Show

Steve Rio

Executive Director